ALMATY – Kazakhstan plans to shorten the preparation of initial public offerings by up to five months and reduce the full cycle of bond issuance to as little as one to two months, but market participants say faster procedures alone may not attract more companies to the stock market. The deeper challenge, they note, is creating sufficient investor demand and liquidity for newly listed securities.
A roundtable discussion was held in Almaty on Sept. 2 to discuss the main provisions and key areas of the Stock Market Development Program until 2030. Photo credit: Agency for Regulation and Development of Financial Market.
The measures are included in the draft Capital Market Development Program for 2026–2030 and are intended to reduce costs and make Kazakhstan’s capital market more accessible to new issuers.
Business analyst Baubek Turekhanov said the proposed simplification is logical, but does not address what he considers the main barrier to companies entering the market.
“Reducing the IPO preparation period and simplifying requirements for smaller issues look logical, but they address the wrong barrier,” Turekhanov told The Astana Times.
Kazakhstan’s capital market has expanded
Business analyst Baubek Turekhanov. Photo credit: Turekhanov’s personal archive.
Kazakhstan’s capital market has recorded sustained growth across its main segments in recent years. Over the past five years, the domestic equity market’s capitalization has more than doubled, with an average annual growth rate of 11%. The government sees further capital market development as a way to expand access to long-term financing beyond traditional bank lending.
“The implementation of these initiatives is aimed at creating a modern architecture of the stock market and conditions for its further development as one of the key sources of long-term financing for the economy alongside bank lending,” Agency for Regulation and Development of Financial Market Chair Madina Abylkassymova said during a Sept. 2 roundtable.
The program envisions a “deep, liquid and diversified” capital market that would give businesses access to long-term financing, give individuals a wider range of reliable instruments for long-term savings, and help transform domestic savings into investment.
Faster procedures target a fragmented process
Currently, companies seeking to enter the capital market interact with several institutions according to their respective mandates. The regulatory agency registers securities issues, the Central Securities Depository (CSD) assigns an international identification number and records ownership rights, while the stock exchange conducts listing procedures.
The draft program proposes creating a unified digital window for issuing and placing shares and bonds, with the CSD expected to operate the system. An issuer would submit a standardized package of documents once through a digital account. The system would automatically check the completeness and format of the documents and distribute them to the regulator, exchange and depository.
The system would also make the application status, comments and deadlines available, and procedures would run in parallel rather than sequentially. The program also proposes unified application forms, issue prospectuses, disclosure requirements and interaction procedures between the institutions.
Issuer checks, including anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing procedures, would be conducted once, with the results available to all participants in the process.
The CSD would gradually assume responsibility for receiving and preliminarily checking documents, as well as registering bond issues under bond programs.
Requirements would also differ by the type and size of an issue, investor category and the issuer’s experience in the public market. For bonds offered to a limited group of professional investors, the program would introduce a shortened set of documents. For small and medium-sized issues, the program proposes a simplified prospectus containing five key sections instead of more than 15.
The missing ingredient may be liquidity
Turekhanov highlighted that simplified listing mechanisms show that reducing administrative procedures alone may not significantly increase the number of companies entering the market.
According to him, a simplified listing regime already operates on the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange through its Alternative Platform for small and medium-sized businesses. The platform does not require companies to meet thresholds for profit, revenue or capitalization and requires one completed year of financial reporting under International Financial Reporting Standards.
The Astana International Exchange has also operated a Regional Equity Market Segment since 2020, which Turekhanov describes as broadly comparable with London’s AIM market.
“Despite this, in 2025 securities of 41 new issuers were listed on KASE, of which only one was in the equities sector. This is not a consequence of lengthy procedures. It is a lack of demand,” he said.
In his view, the problem is fundamentally linked to liquidity. The logic, therefore, may need to work in the opposite direction from simply making it easier for companies to list.
“First, investors and money must appear on the exchange, and then companies will become interested,” Turekhanov said.
This creates a policy challenge for the new program. If a company can enter the market more quickly but finds that its securities are rarely traded afterward, the reduction in administrative costs may have limited impact on its financing strategy. For issuers, the attractiveness of an IPO or bond placement depends not only on the time and cost required to complete the process, but also on whether securities can attract investors and trade actively afterward.
Foreign investors could widen the market
Turekhanov considers the program’s measures to attract foreign investors particularly important. These include access through international depository infrastructure and recognition of client-verification procedures conducted by global custodians. Greater integration with international market infrastructure could reduce practical barriers for foreign investors and make Kazakh securities easier to access.
For Kazakhstan, improving market accessibility could thus become part of a wider effort to increase the international visibility and investability of local securities.
“Simplifying procedures is a necessary but not sufficient condition. The effect will emerge only if liquidity, the investor base and the cost of financing also change,” Turekhanov concluded.
